“The Role of Districts in Fostering Instructional Improvement: Lessons from Three Urban Districts Partnered With the Institute for Learning” is available from the RAND Corp.
Urban school systems can bring about districtwide instructional improvements and third-party or “intermediary” groups can play a useful role in helping them do it, suggests a RAND Corp. report that tracks three unnamed, big-city districts that set out in the late 1990s to improve public schooling.
The districts were among 30 across the country that were working at the time with the Institute for Learning, a group based at the University of Pittsburgh that coached district-improvement efforts. The 190-page report comes as more experts nationwide are focusing on the district, rather than the school or classroom, as a lever for change.
